


Open Your Eyes and Look North

by TooGoodToBeBad



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Game(s), don't give up on your dreams guys, let's look at the stars and talk about our dreams and feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27819751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooGoodToBeBad/pseuds/TooGoodToBeBad
Summary: Enbarr has fallen, and Ashe doesn't know if he has the strength and energy to walk the path to knighthood. Ingrid wants to guide him back.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Kudos: 10





	Open Your Eyes and Look North

The first thing that Ashe really felt was the exhaustion. A week passed since Enbarr fell, and he was still tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of war. Tired of everything, really. The nights were restless, and sleep was a ghost that haunted and escaped him. 

There was a dull ache in his bones that refused to go away, and a frowning Mercedes insisted there was nothing wrong with him, at least physically.

This must have been one of those soul things, then. 

He’d read about them, of course. If they happened to the greatest of knights, they most definitely could happen to people who weren’t knights, too. A crisis of purpose was how _Valor Under the Stars_ had described it. It was a common trope in knight stories.

Knights.

Did he really want to spend the rest of his life fighting? Was that all there was? Was that all he was destined to do? Ashe didn’t quite know if he even wanted to know the answer to that.

After dinner, his feet began to stray, wandering down winding palace halls until he found himself in the gardens. The flowers were beautiful, well-maintained until the unfortunate demise of the previous palace resident, but at least the gardeners still looked after them. There must have been a dozen different species he’d never seen before; the climate down south was quite different from that of Faerghus. It made sense that the flowers would be different. Rich and vibrant shades of red, yellow, green, orange, pink, and purple danced at the edge of his vision, bathed in cool and gentle moonlight. 

He must have really been tired if even the bright colors of nature failed to stir something within him.

A low sigh escaped him as he took a seat on one of the steps and turned his gaze to the stars. At least the stars were still there. Thousands upon thousands of them dotted the night sky, as far away from him as the feeling of belonging. 

“Ashe! There you are!” a familiar voice called out. 

His pale green eyes blinked slowly, and he turned his head to see Ingrid making her way towards him. “Hey there, Ingrid,” he smiled weakly.

“Mind if I keep you company?” she asked.

He nodded. “Not at all. Please feel free to join me.”

She looked different in the moonlight, he realized. There was a different light in her piercing green eyes, a different glimmer in her blonde hair. She looked absolutely beautiful under the light of the stars. 

“So I was just speaking with His Highness,” she began excitedly, and his stomach twisted into knots - he knew where this conversation was going. “And he said that by next week we should be making the journey back to Fhirdiad. His coronation will be soon, and not long after that,” she paused for dramatic effect, and that hopeful sparkle in her eyes sent his heart sinking into the pit of his stomach. “We get to be knighted. Formally. Can you believe it?”

A thin, dishonest smile crossed his face. “That sounds incredible, Ingrid.”

“Ashe,” she frowned deeply. “Is everything alright?”

The smile dropped from his face and he let out a sad chuckle. “I’m that easy to read?”

“You’ve always been too honest,” she replied. “Plus, growing up with Felix and Sylvain, I learned to read people.”

“Figures.”

“Come on, talk to me,” Ingrid placed a hand on his shoulder. “I thought you’d be a lot more excited about this! This is everything we’ve dreamed of, and it’s almost in our grasp. All the sacrifices we’ve made are about to pay off.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I’m both tired and restless, if that makes sense. I haven’t slept well recently, and I’m so exhausted.”

She nodded her head. “I think so. To be honest, I feel it, too. Now that the war’s over, everything just kind of sets in at once.”

Ashe turned his head to look at her, and her tiny smile and curious eyes seemed to be constricting his heart, causing it to beat out of sync with the rest of him. “Won’t you look at the stars with me?” she asked.

A slight nod was all he could muster before looking up to the sky.

“There was a book I read,” Ingrid began. “The name escapes me, but in the story there was a brave and fearless knight who was cursed to roam the land for ten years before he could finally come home. During his travels, he always watched for this one star - the _Maiden in the Sky_. Whenever he found the _Maiden_ , it reminded him of home, and when the ten years were over, he followed the path towards her until he found his way back home.”

Ashe waited with bated breath - Ingrid had that look in her eyes whenever she told a story. He knew her well enough to know that there was more.

“The _Maiden_ led him home. And if you look just over there,” she turned back and pointed her index finger towards a bright white dot in the sky just above the palace, “you can see her just above the horizon. She’s a bit hard to find since we’re so far south, but she’s still there. She’s leading us back north. Back home. So we can become the people we’ve always known we were meant to be.”

Her words seemed to pass right through him. Normally whenever she shared these stories, her words would settle in his chest and warm his heart while energizing his spirit. Something was wrong.

She must have sensed the uneasiness that pressed down on him. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she frowned. 

He shook his head somberly and pointedly refused to look her in the eye. “I don’t know if I want to.”

“I just want to help, Ashe,” she pleaded, and he hated that he could make her sound so distressed. “Just like you’ve helped me.”

“You won’t like what I have to say.”

“I don’t mind. I just…” her voice trailed off. “I just need to know that you’re okay.”

A poignant and resigned sigh escaped him. He didn’t know when his own soul started to feel so heavy. “I’m having doubts about what I want to do for the rest of my life. I feel so tired and empty, and I don’t know,” his voice caught in his throat, and his words were threatening to come undone at the edges. “I don’t know if I still want to walk the path to knighthood.”

A hundred different emotions seemed to register on Ingrid’s face when the weight of his words seemed to hit her like a nasty shock that rattled her bones. The silence between them was deafening now, drowning out his own thoughts. For an excruciatingly long moment, neither of them made a sound.

“But Ashe,” she finally said, and his heart began to ache from the way she sounded so disappointed. Disappointed in _him_. “I thought we were going to do this together. What happened to that?”

His throat began to tighten around his words. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“I would’ve given up on all of this long ago if you hadn’t believed in me,” her voice was soft and fragile, which was terribly unlike her. “But you gave me what I needed to keep going. You got me that one book, remember?”

“I know I did,” he replied, and his words felt so heavy and dangerous on his tongue. “And I could never forget that.”

The little quiver in Ingrid’s voice was almost painful to hear, and Ashe could only watch helplessly as she turned her gaze back towards the deep blue sky. “We promised each other, remember? That night, we… I’ve been holding on to that one night, that one promise.”

He did remember, which was probably the worst part. He’d never forget, so long as he lived. The shards of a broken promise could cut him up and leave wounds that never really close and scars that would never really heal. 

* * *

_The two of them, barely alive and laying in a ditch, a shallow grave waiting to be filled. Rain fell from the skies and chilled them to the bones. Huddled together for warmth, for solace. The stench of death invading their senses, blood streaked on their faces. Tomorrow was no longer promised to them._

_“We’ll make it back,” Ashe gasped as he blinked rainwater out of his eyes. “We’re going to survive, Ingrid.”_

_“We have to,” Ingrid’s voice was dangerously soft, fading and barely audible under the sounds of a storm. If only his legs worked and his body didn’t hurt in a hundred different places, he would have carried her to safety himself._

_“Look at me, Ingrid,” he said. “We’ll make it through tonight, okay? We’ll come back home when this is all said and done. We’ll get knighted, just like we wanted.”_

_She smiled weakly at him, and it provided a little warmth in his chest against the deep cold washing over him. “Just like we wanted?”_

_“Just like we wanted.”_

_Her fingers were now brushing against his jaw, wiping away at the raindrops that made their way down his face. “Let’s promise it, then. Survive the worst this war throws at us, and then we get knighted.”_

_He smiled despite himself. “It’s a promise.”_

* * *

They were found the next day, weak and shivering, but alive. They were both confined to bed rest for the next two weeks, what with the cold they’d both come down with and the various injuries they’d sustained. During that time Felix would not stop scowling at them and Sylvain would not stop smirking. But they got through it, no worse for wear.

“I thought we'd meant what we said that night, Ashe,” her voice snapped him out of the reverie he didn’t realize he’d fallen into. In the dark, her eyes still shone. They still saw right through him. 

All his words escaped him, and Ashe fumbled around to find the right thing to say. “We did. Maybe I still do. But I’m so tired, Ingrid. I’m tired of war. I’m tired of fighting.”

“I suppose it’s not fair for me to be so hard on you about this,” Ingrid sighed. “There were times when I felt like giving up. Even after you got me that book, even after we made that promise. The journey’s been hard…” her voice trailed off. “But that promise we made, it kept me going. Even more than the book. It’s been that night more than anything, if I’m being honest with myself.”

He only nodded his head, letting the silence fill in the space between them. The unspoken pleas in her eyes and the weight of a rain-soaked promise pressed down on his shoulders like the heaviest armor. 

“But what we want is right in front of us now,” her voice was a faint whisper now. “So why are you hesitating? What’s holding you back? Why won’t you walk this path with me?”

In the silence that followed, he could barely hear his own heartbeat amidst the rush of blood in his ears. 

“It’s a bit scary, isn’t it?” he finally said. “To see that everything you’ve ever dreamed of is within reach if you just stretched out your hand and took it. But then you start to wonder if it’s going to be as great as you thought it would be - if it’s really what you want. And after everything we’ve been through, I don’t know if I have it in me to wage another war.”

A pleasant, familiar warmth wrapped itself around his hand, and he looked down to see her fingers tangled up with his. He tried to pull away, but Ingrid had a grip stronger than steel. She would not let him go so easily.

“Ashe, it’s okay to be tired, to be afraid. Everyone is right now. And I hope with all my heart that we never have to fight another war so long as we live,” she said, and the glint in her eyes softened into something somber. “But that’s not all that knighthood is. You’ve told me as much. Loyalty, honor, chivalry, justice. Standing up for the good things in this world. You know this just as well as I do. Perhaps even better than I do.

“It sounds silly to say, but one of the reasons that I’ve fought so hard to keep my dream alive and walk the path I’ve carved for myself is because I knew that you were walking with me every step of the way. Now it’s all taking shape, and I won’t go until you follow.”

He let out a hushed little laugh despite himself. “Are you quoting the _Ballad of the North?_ ”

“I knew you’d recognize it.”

“How could I not?” he chuckled. “It’s one of my favorite stories.”

There was a sad sort of understanding in her eyes. “Just try to think about it, okay? Think about why we wanted this in the first place. We’ve still got some time before we go back home. But whatever you decide, I hope it makes you happy.”

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Ashe said softly. “You’ve helped me find my perspective.”

“Does that mean-”

“I don’t know yet. But you’ve reminded me why I wanted this in the first place. There is more to knighthood than war. I can’t believe I’ve let myself forget that. Thank you, Ingrid.”

She cracked a tiny smile and let go of his hand. “Of course. You never let me give up so easily. No reason for me not to do the same.”

Before he could react, she leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss on his forehead, and the feeling was enough to set his nerve endings on fire and send shockwaves down his spine. “Good night, Ashe,” she gave him one more smile as she rose and made her way back inside the palace. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He watched her leave, and he couldn’t help but notice her walking underneath the bright, guiding light of the _Maiden in the Sky_ , the light that would lead him home.

All that was left to do was follow.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback and comments are appreciated!
> 
> So I wanted to try something new where it's Ashe who's all bummed out and then Ingrid comes to the rescue. I hope it read alright.
> 
> Thanks again!


End file.
